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The Real Winner of the Templeton
Prize

27 March 2010.
Technically, the winner of the 2010 Templeton Prize of $1.5
million was
Francisco J. Ayala, a 76-year-old evolutionary geneticist
and molecular biologist. The award was to honor Ayala for making
"an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual
dimension." The award has nothing to do with science, yet the
announcement of the award took place in the lecture hall of the
US National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Without a
doubt, the real winner was the Templeton Foundation itself. Not
only did it gull the NAS into letting it rent its facilities for
the announcement, the choice of Ayala guarantees continued media
and blogosphere coverage until the actual check is handed over
on
May 5th by the Duke of Edinburgh in a private ceremony at
Buckingham Palace.

Even before Ayala was
announced, the Templeton Foundation set the bait for Richard
Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and PZ Myers. John Templeton sent out the
following letter to selected "colleagues" some time before the
announcement:

The US National Academy of Sciences has brought ignominy on
itself by agreeing to host the announcement of the 2010
Templeton Prize. This is exactly the kind of thing Templeton
is ceaselessly angling for – recognition among real scientists
– and they use their money shamelessly to satisfy their doomed
craving for scientific respectability. They tried it on with
the Royal Society of London, and they seem to have found a
compliant Quisling
in the current President, Martin Rees, who, though not
religious himself, is a fervent 'believer in belief'.
Fortunately, enough Fellows made a stink about it to ensure
that the Royal will not flirt with Templeton in future. Now
Templeton are apparently trying the same trick with the US
National Academy. If you know any officers, or elected
members, of the Academy, please write in protest.

Incidentally, look at the fatuous request in capital
letters in the middle of the announcement: "If you guess the
winner, please honor a strict embargo (you can't tell anyone)
until 11.00 am on Thursday March 25th 2010." Embargo a guess?
It is one thing to put an embargo on privileged information,
but embargo a GUESS? Well, I suppose that is just another
indication of the way a
faith-head's
mind works. Their whole world-view, after all, is founded on
an inability to distinguish evidence from an ill-informed
guess.

Well, let's all guess away to our heart's content. Which
leading scientist has done the most to betray science in
favour of his imaginary friend? You can rule out the people
they'd privately like to honor (such as Intelligent Design
"theorists") because that would go against the official policy
of courting respectability among scientists. Nowadays they
target genuinely good scientists (like Freeman Dyson, winner
of the 2000 Templeton Prize), whose subversion provides more
bang for the (mega)buck than primarily religious figures who
happen also to be scientists. In the early days they didn't
even make a pretence of finding a scientist at all: the 1982
winner was the notorious creationist Billy Graham!

The smart money for the embargoed
God's Applepolisher
Guess (GAG)
is on Francis Collins (he's the person who
finds C S Lewis persuasive, and who saw the Trinity in a
three-pronged frozen waterfall), but I'd place a side bet on
Simon Conway Morris or Martin Nowak.

PZ Myers was soon patting Dawkins on the back for his flamboyant
rhetoric and accurate assessment of the situation. Myers guessed that the winner would be
Francis Collins (if Dawkins's criteria were used), but he added:
"I wouldn't be surprised if Ken Miller is solidly in the
running, though, and if he doesn't get it now, he probably will
in the next few years. I bet
Michael Ruse lusts after
that prize, but his
drooling is just
a little too obvious."

Jerry Coyne commented: "This is an
outrage, of
course, and shame on the National Academy for its implicit
endorsement of religion. If they say, “Well, we rent our space
to anybody,” then I look forward to seeing an adult film
festival at the NAS. I’m guessing that this year’s winner, based
on the location, will be Francis Collins...Runners-up may be
Kenneth Miller, Karen Armstrong, John Haught, and Robert
Wright."

The response of the
scientists who are among our most vocal anti-theists was
inevitable and exactly what the Templeton folks would have hoped
for. They might have hoped for more offensive and hyperbolic
language from Coyne and Myers just to fuel more interest in
their Foundation, but every little bit helps when you're trying
to dupe the world into thinking you're doing something
important. The main goal was to get the NAS to appear to host an
award ceremony for service to religion. The cries of outrage and
betrayal by scientists were just icing on the cake. Their jabs
at Ken Miller, Francis Collins et al. added another layer to the
icing.

There will be no
quiet call for an investigation into who gave the keys to the
NAS to a group whose main function is to promote religious
ideas. Heads will undoubtedly roll, but it will not be done
quietly. Again, this must be very pleasing to the Templeton
folks, as it will call attention to their activities and
continue to pay dividends well beyond the date when professor
Ayala cashes his check from them.

Further dividends
will be paid by their choice of Ayala. He not only advocates a
position that Dawkins gets apoplectic over—that
beliefs in a creator and in natural selection are compatible—he
has a history of criticizing creationism and intelligent design
as pseudoscience and bad theology. The latter guarantees that by
selecting Ayala, the Templeton folks will get added bang for
their buck by causing outrage among the ID folks.
William Dembski writes:

In the last decade...the Prize has
been continually given to people inhabiting the Templeton
Foundation’s inner circle, who promise to keep contemporary
science inviolate and make sure that religion keeps its hands
off. With Francisco Ayala’s receipt of the prize yesterday, the
pattern continues. Ayala is as thorough-going a Darwinist as one
will find. According to him, science and religion reside in
air-tight compartments. So much for a fruitful dialogue between
science and religion.

Dembski finds an ally
in
NewScientist(which seems to be focusing on the
New and leaving the Science to others these days).
Michael Brooks, who is listed as a "consultant" to
NewScientist writes:

"If they are properly understood,"
he said, "they cannot be in contradiction because science and
religion concern different matters."

I don't believe this, and Ayala, a
professor at the University of California, Irvine, should know
better. Science is about finding out how the physical world
works. The only way in which science and religion can "concern
different matters" is if religion has absolutely nothing to do
with the physical world occupied by its believers.

But - and here's the rub - that is
exactly what Templeton "religion" is all about. Its efforts to
find common ground between science and religion have
systematically destroyed pretty much every religious claim.
Little in the creed of the Presbyterian church, for example -
of which the late John Templeton was a lifelong member -
survives its axe.

When I attended a journalism
fellowship funded by the Templeton Foundation in 2005, I
learned from Templeton-endorsed scientists and theologians
that the way to establish a peaceful co-existence of science
and religion was to make no religious claims at all.

They said that creationism is out,
as is intelligent design. There can be no afterlife. Nor does
anyone have an eternal soul. There was no virgin birth - that
was most probably a story made up after Mary was raped by a
Roman soldier. There was no physical resurrection of Jesus.
None of the miracles actually happened. And prayers are not
answered.

This is Templeton version of
religion. A stripped-down, vague and woolly notion that there
is something "other" out there. It makes no claims beyond
that.

Being so very vague and undefined
puts the new Templeton religion comfortably beyond assault
from questioners. But is it really religion? Not by any terms
I am familiar with. I can't help thinking that Jack Templeton,
the evangelical Christian head of the foundation, would agree.

Religion is surely defined as a
belief system involving a specific set of ideas about what the
universe is all about. By its efforts to validate religious
belief in scientific terms, Templeton has actually stripped
religion of all ideas, rendering it entirely pointless.

My advice? If you have a faith
that is important to you, don't try to rationalise it. It's OK
to be religious, believing that there's a purpose to the
universe and that you have an insight into a hidden realm of
knowledge. As neuroscientists and psychologists are
discovering, that's actually the default human state.

But attempting to prove your
religion is based on anything rational or scientific is a
fool's errand. As the Templeton Foundation has rather self-defeatingly
shown over the last few years, it just doesn't work because
they actually do have overlapping concerns, whatever Ayala
says.

The best I can say
for Mr. Brooks is that he's quite confused. On the one hand, he
seems to agree with what he thinks Ayala and the Templeton folks
believe: that religion is a vague, fuzzy, warm feeling you get
when thinking that there's some purpose or meaning to the
universe. That feeling has no clear cognitive content, and it's
pointless to try to bring in science to prove the universe has a
purpose and that your precious consciousness will not dissolve
into nothingness. On the other hand, he seems to think that theologies
like intelligent design (or studies on prayer or miracles)
really tell us something scientific about the nature of the
supernatural. In any case, the negative press from the defenders
of ID will call attention to the Templeton folks. Being
praised for its decision by the National Center for Science
Education, whom Ayala has supported from its beginnings, was
expected. Getting attacked by bitter enemies such
as the anti-theists and the IDers must be positively orgasmic
for the Templetons.